stevenlmeyer,

The tyrannical dictators to which you refer had ideological mind viruses or were pathologically inclined. We all live in a different age now and if such characters tried to impost on civilisation in the same manner, atheists would be the first to oppose.

That is not saying that others wouldn't also.

Of course atheists have mind viruses as you have pointed out but I see no evidence, none, zilch, nada of any type that would destroy civilisation as a goal.

By the way, it is Geoffrey Robertson and not Robinson. A mistake that often happens.:)

David

Wow! Heavy stuff, people. I must write more about nutrients: it obviously brings out the big guns. Some brief responses:
JonJ: sorry, it's the chemistry that links it. Global warming is not essential to this, but the geology says it is an important driver. I trust you do not dispute that warming has occurred in the geological past...
Ludwig: I think we can recycle most nutrients. The dairy industry, for example is making great progress in that regard. So are Denmark and Holland. Oz, as usual is a decade or two behind the frontrunners.
Yabby: there are proven technologies to remove these chemicals from the food chain. Expensive maybe, but they work. It's an easy choice: cost or cancer?
Curmudgeon: you're right: overfishing is a big part of this. I didn't have room to discuss the nuances. However the solution to overfishing is aquaculture. By mid century wild fisheries will be in the same category as wild whale and seal harvests: nonexistent. Peak fish was in 2004, and the catch has been going down ever since (FAO).
Hasbeen: great name, mate. Who's a green? I'm only an old bloke who'd like his grandkids to survive and do OK.
Steven&the nukies: by all means let us worry about nukes and who has 'em. Let us not at the same time forget what is is that keeps us alive, day to day. Nutrients. Try going 72 hours without them. Let's look after them a bit better, is all. Then we can worry about nukes with a full tummy.

Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc,wrote:

>>The tyrannical dictators to which you refer had ideological mind viruses or were pathologically inclined. ... if such characters tried to impost on civilisation in the same manner, atheists would be the first to oppose>>

Oh really?

You mean unlike the atheist Stalin worshippers of the 1930s or the atheist Mao worshippers of the 1960s or the atheist apologists for Islam in the 1990s?

Or unlike the good atheists at the London School of Economics who took the Gadaffi Family Foundation's money a few years ago?

You think the KGB's torturers were somehow not as bad as the mullah's?

You think atheist North Korea is not as scary as Iran?

You haven't noticed that the atheist Mr. Putin is turning Russia into a sort of Saudi Arabia with the Russian Orthodox Church cast in the role of the Wahhabbis? Atheist dictators are quite good at manipulating religions for their own ends.

Give me a break!

As a matter of plain fact I think atheists are closer to the truth than believers on the question of the existence of a deity.

But in my experience atheism is no guarantee of virtue and belief in God does not automatically make someone evil.

And I find atheist smugness as irritating as the Christian / Jewish / Muslim variety.

>>Let us not at the same time forget what is is that keeps us alive, day to day. Nutrients. Try going 72 hours without them. Let's look after them a bit better, is all. Then we can worry about nukes with a full tummy.<<

Where's the connection between eutrophication and starvation? I don't dislike seafood - except prawns - but I don't eat it very often either. If all the fish died because the oceans turned hypoxic that would be a terrible and tragic thing. But I'd still have plenty to eat and therefore a full tummy to worry about nukes on.

Cheers,

Tony

stevenlmeyer,

Atheists are those saying they don’t know and instead are pointing out where religion is demonstrably wrong. Religionists are proclaiming they do know. Who is smug? If you don’t recognise atheism today as being a positive force for humanity but have to revert to the early 20th century to support an erroneous view grasped at by mainly the faithful, then you are distorting history and muddying the present.

It is unimportant if atheists are wrong today, the main point is that religion is observably mistaken in many of its teachings.

Show me some present-day examples of atheism today where its words or actions threatens to bring society back to barbarity. Aligning atheism today with past ideological tyrannies is mindless rhetoric without reason or sense.

It is a stawman statement to say atheism guarantees virtue. Who has said that? Atheism is pointing out the real and potential harms of religion and nothing else. Neither religion nor you have pointed out the opposite.

I would suggest you stop straddling the fence on your high horse of being on neither side.Your ‘full disclosure’ is what atheism is about except that thinking in a growing number of people leads to recognition of the actual errors perpetrated by religion. You don’t have to join those folk but you should realise why those thoughts are becoming commonplace.

Are you as an atheist, a danger to civilisation because that is what you are saying about others like you?

Start quoting from the vast amount of recent literature by atheists where there is some kind of danger to humanity.

You make me despair.

David

G'day Tony,
I would suggest the 'link' lies in the excessive nutrients, Not required in the oceans, Are required on land.
Currently we mine nutrients and through a convoluted digestive process, dump them at sea.
This is obviously a linear process which can only have one eventual outcome, as the mines are finite.
While a perfectly circular process is not possible (some losses are inevitable) surely a More circular process is just common sense?
Particularly when the loss of valuable nutrients is harming other parts of the ecology.
I imagine Ludwig would agree that, if we can't create a perfectly circular system, then a spiralling system -where diminishing resources are balanced against diminishing populations- would still be more rational than a linear process ending in...?
While I have no desire to join the debates on Nuclear War in the ME or another tiresome debate about atheism on this thread about nutrients, Scarcity of essential commodities is obviously a very good reason for war.
We have a very large planet which should be enough to support us for thousands, if not millions of years.
Yet we are already predicting the complete loss of essential commodities within just a few hundred.
Such profligacy can only make war inevitable. The fact that it probably won't occur within our lifetimes doesn't make it excusable.
We in the 'first world' have an unprecedented ability to talk to our great great great grandchildren.
Almost everyone can afford to make a video of themselves that their family can watch down through the ages.
Who wants to explain to their ggg grandchild that the reason they are at war is because we just didn't care?